Eichmann Trial -- Session 70 -- Screening of films

Identifier
irn1001709
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 1999.A.0087
  • RG-60.2100.084
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • Silent
Source
EHRI Partner

Creator(s)

Biographical History

Emil Knebel was a cinematographer known for Andante (2010), Adam (1973), and Wild Is My Love (1963). He was one of the cameramen who recorded daily coverage of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (produced by Capital Cities Broadcasting Corp and later held academic positions in Israel and New York teaching filmmaking at universities. Refer to CV in file.

Scope and Content

Session 70. Cuts between the film footage entered into the trial as evidence and of still photos entered into the trial as evidence and Eichmann watching the footage. Eichmann does not seem to change his expression throughout the screening. 00:00:27 Footage being shown in the courtroom - medical examinations of inmates, posters of Nazis. Eichmann in courtroom speaking. 00:04:32 Footage of train with cattle cars going past. Scenes in a camp, jumping into pits, being helped onto trucks (?), being shot in pits and then buried. 00:06:45 Train with cattle cars at dusk. 00:08:08 Footage of people with arm bands at a railway station getting into cattle cars, SS guards. Cuts back and forth to Eichmann in the courtroom. 00:10:58 More people, with belongings, arrive at station. 00:12:12 Changing projector reel in courtroom, Eichmann. 00:14:40 Blurred writing comes up on the screen, in French, credits come up. "Nuit at Brouillard" (Night and Fog), a documentary by Alain Resnais is screened. One of the most vivid depictions of the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, filmed in 1955 at the postwar site of Auschwitz, the film combines color footage with black and white newsreels and stills to tell the story not only of the Holocaust, but the horror of man's brutal inhumanity. 00:16:09 Film starts. Barbed wire, subtitles "A peaceful landscape, a field with crows, a country road, a village, holidaymakers and a fairground. The way to a concentration camp...were merely names on the map. The tongues are silent. Only the camera circles the..." All along the camera pans over a concentration camp. Eichmann watching the film. Footage of Nazi party rallies. Shots of a camp. 00:19:04 Still shots of people with their belongings, lining up to get into trucks. Footage of people walking down road with all their belongings, getting into cattle cars. Father with children. SS closing up the doors to the cattle cars. 00:21:21 Train leaves station, shots of Auschwitz. Still photographs of many people sitting in courtyard, naked people lined up. Subtitles, triangles on clothes and armbands shown. Pictures of SS. 00:23:54 Shots of the wooden bunks people had to sleep in, buildings of the camp. Stills photos of men in bed, the band, snow. Eichmann watching film. Inmates, deportees, drinking soup. 00:27:22 Latrines, subtitles on the black market, resistance. 00:28:04 Entrance to Auschwitz, signs of other camps, orchestra, a bear. 00:28:34 Children, people with crutches. 00:29:10 Stills photos of people who had thrown themselves to the electric fence, naked people lined up. Hartheim. Trucks; letters. 00:30:49 Still photos of dying men, footage in camp hospitals. 00:31:55 Woman talking to camera, subtitles about medical experiments. Men who were castrated, emaciated legs, passports shown. Register of thousands of names. 00:33:53 Still photos of well dressed, well fed people sitting around laughing. Eichmann watching. Subtitle "1942" - SS men shaking hands, Himmler. Plans for camp and incinerator. 00:35:49 deportations, train. Dead bodies in truck. 00:36:30 Still photos of naked women and men, cylinders of Zyklon gas. 00:36:54 The inside of a gas chamber. Emaciated corpses in piles. 00:37:58 Clandestine still photos, taken by the Resistance, of burning bodies outside at Auschwitz when the crematorium became too full. Skulls, limbs and human remains. 00:38:25 The ovens. Eichmann watching the film, he does not change his position throughout the viewing. 00:39:20 Piles of spectacles, pits, shoes, hair, carpets. 00:40:24 Oven door is opened and a human skeleton is inside. Bodies, decapitated heads, soap presumably made from humans. 00:41:03 Artwork laid out on table. Arial shots of camp. Bodies littering the ground, subtitle mentions typhus. 00:42:06 Tractor pushes all the bodies out of the way into a pit. Women leaving the building, men and women in uniforms walk past the camera. Skulls lined up, deportees looking through barbed wire fences. Kapos saying that they are not responsible. 00:43:40 More shots of bodies. Eichmann watching.

Note(s)

  • See official transcripts, published in "The Trial of Adolf Eichmann", Vol. I-V, State of Israel, Ministry of Justice, Jerusalem, 1994. Also available online at the Nizkor Project.

Subjects

Places

Genre

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